This post is about two things really – a performance about a past injustice, and the current issue it has raised.

The performance was a brilliant piece of political theatre, which runs in Sydney until September the 8th. Deeply Offensive and Utterly Untrue, a very theatrical retelling of the Australian Government’s enquiry into the Australian Wheat Board’s rorting of Iraq’s “oil for food” program. The company condensed over ten thousand pages of politics into a couple of hours of theatre, transforming a “mind-bogglingly complex mass of details” into a piece of informative entertainment… with almost all the script taken directly from the pages of the enquiry. it’s the best way to learn history.

the issue is the state of the wheat industry in Iraq post invasion.
A law was passed which required the registration of the types of wheat planted by farmers in Iraq. It punished people who replanted wheat seeds from a previous year’s crop with fines and imprisonment. the law was not drafted to help feed the Iraqi people, it main considerations were that Iraq become a “full member in the international trading system, known as the World Trade Organisation, and the desirability of adopting modern intellectual property standards.”
full text of the new patent law here: http://mindfully.org/Farm/2004/Iraq-Plant-Variety-Law26apr04.htm and more commentary here: http://mindfully.org/Farm/2004/Iraq-Patent-Law-CPA15oct04.htm

The peformance program also suggested a New Scientist article: http://technology.newscientist.com/channel/tech/weapons but as i write this the site is down for maintenance so i haven’t read it myself.